Intel's Gesture Control Promises Hands-Free Life

Taipei: U.S. computer chip giant Intel said its gesture-controlled technology could soon become part of everyday life as it showed its vision of a no-touch lifestyle in Taiwan.

Its stand at Computex, Asia's largest technology trade show, recreates a living space centered around a kitchen, illustrating how sticky fingers on screens and recipe books could be a thing of the past.

An actress with messy hands from cooking clicked through icons and apps and scrolled through cookery pages on a large monitor using just hand motions from around 12 inches (30 centimeters) away.

"This is a good example of the home usage of gesture," Intel's Jon Marshall told AFP, adding the technology harnesses voice recognition as well.

"We're trying to get a hands-free environment. Most people when they speak are animated -- it's a natural way to communicate. We're trying to take that to the next level in computing.

"It's going to mean more cameras, microphones -- the platform you're working with is going to natively recognize what you're doing."

The advances are the latest developments in Intel's sense technology which uses a camera with both 2-D and 3-D capabilities embedded into devices, enabling them to "see" depth and recognize facial expressions and movements.

Other companies that have rolled out gesture-control devices include Microsoft, which developed the Kinect accessory for its Xbox video game consoles which can recognize users, respond to spoken commands and detect a person's pulse.

Marshall, who is a senior technical marketing engineer at Intel, said the firm's gesture-controlled technology should be available on a range of devices by the end of the year.

Visitors at the show also tried their hand at controlling an old-fashioned fairground-style toy grabber game which uses the same hands-free technology, operating a metal claw through hand gestures detected by a camera.